Tuscaloosa man's execution delayed in Texas slayings

A Tuscaloosa man who was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday hopes his life will be spared because of a new Texas law.

By Stephanie TaylorStaff Writer | The Tuscaloosa News

A Tuscaloosa man who was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday hopes his life will be spared because of a new Texas law.Arthur Brown Jr., 43, was scheduled to be executed in Texas for the 1992 execution-style killings of four people in Houston.The execution is in limbo after attorneys filed an appeal that will allow further scientific testing, based on a law passed in the spring. The legislation that went into effect Sept. 1 allows Texas courts to overturn convictions in cases in which the forensic science that originally led to the verdict has been discredited by scientific advancements.Brown and two other men restrained and shot a man who had sold them cocaine, along with three others, at a Houston home. The victims included a woman who was seven months pregnant. Authorities said victim Jose Tovar had been acting as a middle-man between cocaine and marijuana suppliers and the three defendants from Tuscaloosa. The three men went to Tovar’s home on June 20, 1992, where they used towels or bedsheets to tie the victims’ hands behind their backs and put nooses around their necks. Six victims were taken to separate rooms and shot in the head. Two survived.The victims included Tovar, his wife’s son, Frank Farias, 17; Farias’ pregnant girlfriend Jessica Quinones, 19; and Audrey Brown, 21, a neighbor who had stopped by to visit.Survivors included friend Nicholas Cortez, 22, and Tovar’s wife, Rachel Tovar, who crawled to a neighbor’s house for help.The survivors later identified Brown, Marion Dudley and Antonia “Tony” Dunson as suspects. Dudley was executed in 2006. Dunson, who was driving a getaway car and not accused of firing any shots, is serving a life sentence.Dudley and Dunson were captured in North Carolina three months later. Brown was apprehended by members of the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit at Crestmont Apartments in Northport, four months after the shootings on Oct. 23, 1992. He has remained behind bars for 21 years.A Houston Police crime lab official testified in Brown’s trial about bullet casings, fragments and shell casings that he said matched two guns recovered in Alabama. The new law allows forensics experts to test whether those were the same guns used in the killings, Brown’s attorneys wrote in an appeal filed in Harris County (Texas) District Court.The appeal will be heard in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.